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<h1><a href="https://archiveofourown.org/works/26895829">I Know About the Human Heart (I Have Been Watching Yours)</a> by <a class='authorlink' href='https://archiveofourown.org/users/TheSkyLarkin/pseuds/TheSkyLarkin'>TheSkyLarkin</a></h1>

<table class="full">

<tr><td><b>Series:</b></td><td>SkyLarkin's Whumptober 2020 Fics [5]</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Category:</b></td><td>Kingdom Hearts (Video Games)</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Genre:</b></td><td>Canon Compliant at the time of writing, Emotional Hurt/Comfort, Emotional Whump, Flashbacks, Gaslighting, Gen, Isolation, Memory Alteration, Memory Alteration really messes with the verb tenses, Mentioned Ava (Kingdom Hearts), Mentioned Player Character (Kingdom Hearts), Missing Scene, Unconventional Format, Unrequited Crush, Whumptober 2020, Worldbuilding</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Language:</b></td><td>English</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Status:</b></td><td>Completed</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Published:</b></td><td>2020-10-08</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Updated:</b></td><td>2020-10-08</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Packaged:</b></td><td>2021-05-06 22:22:25</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Rating:</b></td><td>General Audiences</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Warnings:</b></td><td>No Archive Warnings Apply</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Chapters:</b></td><td>1</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Words:</b></td><td>2,923</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Publisher:</b></td><td>archiveofourown.org</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Story URL:</b></td><td>https://archiveofourown.org/works/26895829</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Author URL:</b></td><td>https://archiveofourown.org/users/TheSkyLarkin/pseuds/TheSkyLarkin</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Summary:</b></td><td><div class="userstuff">
              <p>What Elrena remembered before meeting Lauriam, <s>and everything she’d been made to forget</s>. Written before UX Mission 965.</p><p>Challenge: Whumptober 2020<br/>Prompts: No. 8 - “Where did everybody go?” “Abandoned” “Isolated”</p><p>See End Notes for comprehensive warnings/tags</p>
            </div></td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Relationships:</b></td><td>Elrena &amp; Strelitzia (Kingdom Hearts), Lauriam &amp; Strelitzia (Kingdom Hearts)</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Series:</b></td><td>SkyLarkin's Whumptober 2020 Fics [5]</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Series URL:</b></td><td>https://archiveofourown.org/series/1946617</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Comments:</b></td><td>2</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Kudos:</b></td><td>7</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Collections:</b></td><td>Whumptober 2020</td></tr>

</table>

<a name="section0001"><h2>I Know About the Human Heart (I Have Been Watching Yours)</h2></a>
<div class="story"><div class="fff_chapter_notes fff_head_notes"><b>Author's Note:</b><blockquote class="userstuff">
      <p>Thank you to <a href="https://apollosvotive.tumblr.com/">Apollosvotive</a>/<a href="https://archiveofourown.org/users/Lihgtwood/pseuds/Lihgtwood">lihgtwood</a> for beta reading!</p>
    </blockquote></div><div class="userstuff module">
    
    <p>As a general rule, Elrena worked best alone.</p><p>She <s>had reluctantly accepted the chrithy forced upon her in order to receive her keyblade</s> put off getting a spirit pet as long as she could—she already had Chirithy, why were the <s>Foretellers</s> <s>Union Leaders</s> people in charge trying to force more strange animals onto them? Were they trying to replace the Chirithies? How could they!? Chirithy seemed to get a little choked up when he explained to her that this wasn’t the case, but Elrena didn’t understand why.</p><p>In the beginning <s>before the Dandelions fled and the previous world had been lost to darkness</s>, Elrena <s>had</s> cycled through Unions a couple of times before finally settling on Vulpes—and only because they always did reliably well in the lux rankings. Despite also being here for the explicit purpose of defending the light from the forces of darkness rather than to “make friends”, this pragmatism seemed to unnerve the other keyblade wielders around her. The Foretellers <s>had</s> tried to create bonds of friendship (or whatever) between the Union members in order to prevent this sort of behavior, but that didn’t bother her. Elrena had never been great at making friends anyway.</p><p>Some of the other kids <s>here and before she came to Daybreak Town</s> seemed to find her cold and judgemental. But it wasn’t her fault that she detested frivolous small talk and clowning around when there were more important things to do! Chirithy insisted that this didn’t make her a mean person… just a curt and impatient one sometimes. She just hadn’t found the right people yet was all!</p><p>When this happened (which was more times than Elrena would care to admit), she would reluctantly mutter back that he was probably right. She desperately wished that the other keyblade wielders could understand her half as well as Chirithy did. Perhaps the “right people” for her just simply didn’t exist in this world...</p><p>As with <s>Chirithy in the beginning</s> her spirit pet (“Nuisance” was what Elrena called her obligatory tag-along until she’d gotten some useful medals for him. He then became “Chomp” at Chirithy’s suggestion and Elrena’s eventual acceptance.), Elrena also put off joining one of her Union’s raiding parties as long as she possibly could. When the time came, she also prioritized a strong party that didn’t warrant any emotional commitment over arbitrary attributes like “friendliness”. (And also one that had open recruitment rather than one in which you had to be friends with another member to join—it was rather hard for a nearly friendless person to get accepted into one of those.) This suited Elrena just fine—people came and went too quickly for her to get annoyed by their personalities.</p><p>Or too attached… with one exception.</p>
<hr/><p>After a while, Elrena couldn’t help but notice another girl in the party who was doing the same thing that she had been: join up with the party only for the raids, and leave as soon as the boss had been defeated. The mysterious girl in white didn’t leave much of an impression, hardly ever saying more than a few words to anyone even regarding the current mission. The one time they <s>had</s> ever talked, Elrena had merely wanted to ask about her current medal set up for the next boss. She almost didn’t go through with it after seeing the girl start like a frightened animal as she approached. It was like talking to a timid ghost, and the conversation lasted mere seconds. (But it was seconds longer than Elrena had spoken to anyone else who wasn’t her Chrithy in a long time.)</p><p>Later, Chirithy insisted to her that Strelitzia was a very sweet girl, just an incredibly shy one. <s>He had been friends with her Chirithy for a while now, something which Elrena had been trying to ignore for reasons that she couldn’t quite put into words.</s> Elrena was still reluctant to try and befriend her regardless—why risk ostracizing the one constant presence in her party, especially with all the tension between the Unions <s>and the Foretellers</s> on the rise? Besides, she was always leaving as soon as the raid boss had fallen, probably to go and meet with her real friends...</p><p>Why had <i>this</i> random girl gotten into her head like this when Elrena couldn’t care less about anyone else in her party? When she confessed her frustrations to Chirithy, he sort of patted her on the arm and told her that that was just how it felt to care about someone who didn’t know how much they meant to you. His answer just left her more confused.</p><p>Some time later, she and Strelitzia <s>had</s> happened to meet up at their parties’ rendezvous point for a raid much earlier than everyone else. After exhausting all possible questions about each other’s medal setups for the raid, Strelitzia’s Chirithy <s>had</s> gently nudged her and motioned to Elrena. The girl in white took a deep breath before hesitantly asking Elrena if she’d done this month’s colosseum challenge yet. Elrena had to swallow down her own dismissive remarks about the matches in the colosseum being more about luck (or rather jewels) than skill, before settling upon a more neutral sounding reply about only participating if there was a prize that she needed.</p><p>“Why do you ask?”</p><p>“W-well, my brother’s been trying to get me to start doing more things with other people outside of raids and missions, but—”</p><p>“Oh, you have a brother?” Something about that otherwise innocuous statement jumped out at Elrena. It suddenly occurred to her that she hadn’t heard of many kids in Daybreak Town with siblings who were also keyblade wielders. How odd. “Is he older or younger than you? Which Union is he in?”</p><p>“Lauriam’s my older brother, and he’s in the same Union as us!” The dazzling smile on her face and the way that the pitch of her voice suddenly jumped an octave told Elrena that Strelitzia was clearly very fond of her sibling. Taking the focus off of herself and onto a topic that was dear to her heart, but not as private, had clearly been what Strelitzia had needed to get into the conversation. Over her shoulder, Elrena could clearly see that her Chirithy was struggling not to dance for joy that her wielder was finally (<i>finally!</i>) talking to someone else in her party.</p><p>“Er… do you have any family here in Daybreak Town?”</p><p>“Family? Um—” Elrena’s reply was cut off by the arrival of their other party members. She and Strelitzia didn’t have a chance to talk after that; at the end of the fight, Strelitiza <s>had</s> glanced up at the clock tower and taken off like usual (as if she were late to meet someone important…). <s>But Elrena couldn’t get that seemingly unimportant question out of her head afterward.</s></p><p>
  <s>Family… She couldn’t remember any family. Was she an orphan before? No, she couldn’t remember <i>not</i> having a family before coming to Daybreak Town… but then again she couldn’t seem to remember coming to Daybreak Town at all... </s>
</p><p><s>…but she didn’t have any memories of growing up <i>in</i> Daybreak Town, so that had to mean that she had lived somewhere else before... But where?</s> Through what felt like a thick fog that had suddenly settled in her head, Elrena <s>had</s> distantly heard her Chirithy proclaim <s>(in a voice that sounded as if he were trying desperately to disguise how worried he was)</s> that they should really call it a day if she wasn’t feeling well anymore.</p><p>After what had seemed like a mere moment <s>to her</s>, Elrena blinked and woke up in her bed the next morning. With a yawn, Chirithy informed her that she must have gotten a headache or something, as she had gone straight to bed without dinner as soon as the raid boss had been taken care of. Elrena briefly wondered why she had no memory of getting back to the Vulpes dormitories, but ultimately dismissed it as unimportant.</p><p>(<s>She had tossed and turned that night, deep within nightmares of dark monsters tearing through stone, metal, and flesh with sharp teeth and claws… horrific strange growls and familiar screams ringing in her ears… watching her father torn asunder into nothing by a living shadow and shrieking until she couldn’t make another sound… everyone she cared about, gone in the span of seconds… and the emptiness in her heart as she realized that she was all alone…</s></p><p>
  <s>Where did everybody go?</s>
</p><p><s>Her Chirithy had been working all night to suppress the memories of that previous world—that had succumbed to the darkness before the time of the Master of Masters and the formation of Daybreak Town—from coming back to the surface, lest one of the Foretellers or the Master himself find out…</s>)</p><p>Elrena got a few more chances to talk with Strelitiza, especially once the two of them both received invitations from Master Ava to join the Dandelions <s>when no one else in their party had</s>. Suddenly, previously ambivalent people began to look at her with barely concealed hostility—even amongst her own Union. That, plus the now open hostilities between the Unions <s>and the Foretellers fighting in the streets (which certainly wasn’t helping to quell tensions)</s>, was all the push Elrena needed to join the Dandelions. Her whole purpose for wielding a keyblade was to protect the light after all. All the Unions seemed to care about nowadays was gathering more lux than anyone else. <s>It was almost like they were more concerned about hoarding the light than protecting it…</s></p><p>However, Strelitiza seemed less certain about joining. Elrena <s>had</s> asked her if she was worried about her brother not being invited but to her confusion, Strelitzia quickly clarified that Lauriam <s>had</s> already accepted his invitation and was impatiently waiting for her to do the same.</p><p>“But there are so many other people who haven’t joined yet either…” Strelitiza trailed off almost wistfully, and Elrena felt a pang of… jealousy? No, it couldn’t be… a pang of <i>something</i> towards this mysterious person or persons. She (bitterly) wondered if this was the same individual(s) that Strelitzia seemed to be waiting for whenever she’d catch a glimpse of her on the roof above the Fountain Plaza. Elrena had seen the girl in white up there waiting for them, but no one ever showed up to meet her.</p><p>Were they unaware of the turmoil their indecision seemed to be causing Strelitizia? The trouble she would be in if she were to put off joining the Dandelions while waiting for them until it was too late? Elrena didn’t think it was possible to loathe someone she had never met, and yet…</p>
<hr/><p>Then came the day that Master Ava called all the Dandelions together to announce that this world was doomed and that they’d have to flee in the face of the oncoming war without her in order to keep the light alive. This announcement was met by much panic and dismay from the other Dandelions, but it gave Elrena a surge of hope that this might be the push that Strelitizia needed to join or convince her mystery person/persons to join with her. She saw the red-haired girl in the crowd during the meeting, but she disappeared soon afterwards. Elrena never even got the chance to look for her in between Dandelion training to go to the next world and gathering lux for her Union to keep them off of her back.</p><p>One day, the bells of the clock tower rang out in a deafening toll...<s>A sense of dread settled upon Daybreak Town as the hour of the Keyblade War had finally arrived. Elrena joined the other Vulpes Dandelions in their confusion as Master Ava came to collect her Union members and lead them to the battlefield, without a word to the other faction that she had created. In the confusion, some of the Dandelions ended up going along with them, but Strelitiza was not among this group as far as Elrena could tell. But where else could she have gone?</s></p><p>
  <s>Some of her former party members gave her one last stink-eye before they left, but Elrena couldn’t even muster up some annoyance for them. She only felt emptiness as they disappeared from her sight forever. They were going off to fight, to die… and for what? A pointless war that none of their leaders seemed to have even tried to avoid? She didn’t even like them all that much but the thought of these other kids she’d known for so long—even just in passing—meeting such a grisly, meaningless end...</s>
</p><p>
  <s>A lanky pink-haired boy, whose name Elrena failed to catch in all the commotion, ended up shepherding the remaining Vulpes Dandelions towards the designated meeting place where they would make their journey to the next world as per Master Ava’s instructions. Elrena couldn’t help but notice as she passed that he seemed to be searching for someone as well…</s>
</p><p>…and nothing seemed to happen. The entire tension between <s> the Foretellers and</s> the Unions seemed to have vanished overnight with no explanation. <s>Not that Master Ava had been around recently to ask. The other Foretellers seemed unusually scarce as well…</s> Chirithy didn’t have an answer for her as to what had caused this abrupt ceasefire, and Elrena felt kind of stupid for getting all worked up about the whole thing along with the rest of the Dandelions.</p><p><s>As for the rest of her non-Dandelion party members… wait, what had happened to the Vulpes members who hadn’t joined the Dandelions? Or those not in her party? Or the non-Dandelions from the other Unions? Where did everybody go?</s> She’d been having a lot of nightmares recently, and Chirithy guessed that it must have been from all that needless stress about the war that never happened. Around this time, Chomp started to sleep at the foot of her bed every night, even when she tried to kick him out of the room. Chirithy denied letting him back in once she’d gone to sleep, and Elrena eventually gave up on trying to solve that mystery.</p><p>Elrena’s life seemed to move on as usual from this point, with one glaring exception: Strelitzia never made another appearance on the roof of the Fountain Plaza or at another of her party’s raids. Elrena went out of her way to pass by the fountain regularly in hopes of catching a glimpse of her, but the elusive girl in white was nowhere to be seen. Her mystery friend(s) never made an appearance up there either.</p><p>More than once, she contemplated telling <s>Master Ava</s> someone in charge about Strelitzia’s disappearance or searching herself. But keyblade wielders fell to the darkness all the time; <s>even before the Keyblade War</s> there was always an unspoken assumption that those wielders who had gone missing had simply been overwhelmed by the heartless, and there was simply nothing that could be done for them. The only course of action for the remaining Union members was to slay more heartless and take up their burden of collecting lux in their fallen comrade’s stead.</p><p>As for the second option, Elrena made a few halfhearted attempts at searching before ultimately giving up. She’d get to the point where she was about to ask another wielder when the last time they’d seen Strelitzia had been… only to turn away at the last moment, not out of shyness but out of feeling like a trespasser. Surely Streltizia’s older brother would already be out looking for her if something had really happened? And it wasn’t like they had ever truly been friends—a few occasional conversations didn’t make them any closer than any of Elrena’s other party members, right?</p><p>Right?</p><p>Chirithy didn’t even blink anymore as Elrena briefly pulled him into a tight hug before putting him down just as abruptly and walking off without another word. <s>(He learned by now that it was best not to ask, or risk Elrena shutting down on him yet again. It had taken so long for him to get close to her in the beginning, before the War and the Dandelion’s escape to this new world…)</s></p>
<hr/><p>Even so, Strelitzia’s absence never quite left Elrena’s mind until the fateful day she finally met Lauriam. The pink-haired boy simply appeared out of nowhere as she was catching her breath after a mission (consciously avoiding doing so at the Fountain Plaza yet again this time) and asked if she’d seen his little sister. There was something oddly familiar about him. It was probably the same melodic cadence of their voices when they spoke, like a gentle breeze through a field full of flowers.</p><p>“I heard her mention your name before, so I thought you might know something,” Lauriam explained, and Elrena’s heart did a backflip in her chest. Strelitzia mentioned <i>her</i> to her brother? But why?</p><p>… and that didn’t necessarily mean anything, right? Strelitiza probably mentioned any number of other people to him in passing as well. So Elrena told Lauriam everything she could remember about the last few times she’d seen his sister, and though his expression didn’t betray any emotion, she could sense his growing unease at the lack of any helpful information for his search.</p><p>“Your sister is dear to you, isn’t she,” Elrena blurted out. Lauriam gave a slightly noncommittal answer, but every other part of him seemed to indicate that this was so.</p><p>Elrena smiled wistfully. ‘<i>Must be nice having someone miss you.</i>’ Not that she would know how that felt.</p>
  </div><div class="fff_chapter_notes fff_foot_notes"><b>Author's Note:</b><blockquote class="userstuff"><p>Thanks for reading! Constructive criticism is appreciated!</p><p>Notes: Title taken from a Thao &amp; Mirah song</p><p>Triggers/Warnings: Implied Gaslighting and Dream Eater-Induced Memory Erasure/Tampering, Confusing formatting (in an attempt to distinguish the two separate timelines), Brief Horror Imagery, Implied Child Neglect (someone please call the CPA on MoM and the Foretellers)</p></blockquote></div></div>
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